Van Der Leeuw went on to explain the differences between PS4 and a high-powered PC. “A PC is a number of parts which also has bridges in between where there are inefficiencies that may not be exactly the right match. We’ve got the right amount of memory, video card, everything balanced out. I know it was a very conscious effort to make sure that, with the speed of the memory, the amount of compute units, the speed of the hard-drive that we put in, that there would not be any bottlenecks. So the amount of pixel-pushers that you have, the amount of memory, the speed of your compute units make sure that you don’t hit any of the weakspots of the hardware.”

This balancing of PS4’s architecture and the use of complementary components make it simpler to work with, said Van Der Leeuw. “Whereas if you have a PC very often your buffs, or your express buffs are very slow compared to your video RAM which is GDDR5 and your main RAM then is even slower than that, but you compensate by sticking buffers in there… there’s a lot of things to contemplate in the fact that it is a replaceable-parts architecture. This [PS4] is where all of the parts are designed to work together, naturally.”

The PlayStation 4 has been so carefully designed that developers won't find a performance bottleneck, Michiel Van Der Leeuw, technical director at Guerrilla Games, has told Edge.

"The fact that the best pieces of hardware are also devised from, or optimised versions of, the stuff we find in PCs doesn't make it any less a console," Van Der Leeuw explained. "A PC is a number of parts that also [have] bridges in-between, where there are inefficiencies that may [come in if they're not] exactly the right match."

But with the PS4, Sony has - allegedly - been able to ensure these inefficiencies don't exist.

Van Der Leeuw continued: "We've got the right amount of memory, video card; everything's balanced out. It was a very conscious effort to make sure that – with the speed of the memory, the amount of compute units, the speed of the hard drive – there would not be any bottlenecks.

"I think it was for more than a year that we knew the main ingredients and there was just discussion after discussion trying to find a bottleneck. Take a look at this design; try to find the bottleneck."

PlayStation 4 is expected to launch later this year, with Killzone: Shadow Fall expected to be a launch title.

Usually those are found after one works on the machine for a while, not really something that can be seen from specs alone.
Well, unless there is just something completely bonkers. (IE. N64 4KB texture cache in which you had to fit the whole texture you wanted to render.. etc.)

That's a claim they had better back up with what they release. I think it's a claim that shouldn't have been made.

I guess we'll see a 1080p 60fps game from them that is absolutely amazing.

I agree, I don't think they should of made that claim either, but hopefully it will all be true and we will see lots of 1080p/60 games! It would be nice to see that no one component of the system will drag the rest of the system down, but only time will tell...

I agree, I don't think they should of made that claim either, but hopefully it will all be true and we will see lots of 1080p/60 games! It would be nice to see that no one component of the system will drag the rest of the system down, but only time will tell...

The claim is ludicrous. Not even remotely possible.

Here, do you want me to show you a bottleneck? 176GB/Sec memory bandwidth that is shared between the GPU and CPU.

I never said anything about 4X AA, etc. but yes technically anyone can create a bottleneck for the system if they want do...I have a $#@!ty old GeForce 9600GT in my computer, but I am able to run games at 1080/60, but not with everything turned up depending on the game...I could of easily made the same point as you and used 4K resolution as a reference and said "there's your bottleneck"!

I never said anything about 4X AA, etc. but yes technically anyone can create a bottleneck for the system if they want do...

Which is precisely why the claim never should have been made and the discussion should be limited to how silly it is to make such a claim.

The memory bandwidth is a clear bottleneck. I could think of a dozen different ways to exceed it's limits. It has clear limits on what it can do graphically. Making the claim that it doesn't is akin to lying.

If it can't, then there is no bottleneck... Can't do it in the first place to get that kind of data out to the pipeline... U less your graphics are so simplistic it's a non-issue, at that point, then is all that AA or HDR needed because you aren't even generating graphics that can benefit all that stuff? (Yeah, yeah, yeah.... Everything's possible.. But talking realistic situations here... Does HDR really help mario brothers? AA, sure... Helps most everything.... For the most part, but, you get my drift... I hope)

My knowledge of the inner workings of graphics is weak at best, so only really working from general knowledge combined with logic.... Falty assumptions may be at play here, so talk to the graphics gurus to verify.... But...

Which is precisely why the claim never should have been made and the discussion should be limited to how silly it is to make such a claim.

The memory bandwidth is a clear bottleneck. I could think of a dozen different ways to exceed it's limits. It has clear limits on what it can do graphically. Making the claim that it doesn't is akin to lying.

realistically, where are you going with this?

the ps3 had very clear bottlenecks, in fact a thread was made here on this very forum which went into detail about it.

obviously the devs know the scope within which they speak, you can't say its a silly claim and them use silly figures to disprove them.

Which is precisely why the claim never should have been made and the discussion should be limited to how silly it is to make such a claim.

The memory bandwidth is a clear bottleneck. I could think of a dozen different ways to exceed it's limits. It has clear limits on what it can do graphically. Making the claim that it doesn't is akin to lying.

Lack of bottleneck = balanced system, it seems, in this quote... No one component so outstrips another that the overpowered unit is left idle without anything to do the majority of time.

So yes, your claim is true that everything has a bottleneck except something with infinite power.... Which, using that definition, makes the claim ludicrous, agreed...

I wonder though if they are simply claiming a very well balanced system...

And a check of OP confirms... Claim is of balance, not infinite power.

Ie. each part won't overpower another, thus create a bottleneck because of the overpowered part...

Which is precisely why the claim never should have been made and the discussion should be limited to how silly it is to make such a claim.

The memory bandwidth is a clear bottleneck. I could think of a dozen different ways to exceed it's limits. It has clear limits on what it can do graphically. Making the claim that it doesn't is akin to lying.

I am just hoping the system doesn't have a major bottleneck that will make it suffer down the line like older systems...I am a big fan of Mark Cerny and I have faith he has done a good job with the PS4, which hopefully his work on the system will pay off!

I am just hoping the system doesn't have a major bottleneck that will make it suffer down the line like older systems...I am a big fan of Mark Cerny and I have faith he has done a good job with the PS4, which hopefully his work on the system will pay off!

i doesn't, which is what the dev was referring to.

if i recall, the PS3 had an obvious bandwidth problem (i can't remember though)

Lack of bottleneck = balanced system, it seems, in this quote... No one component so outstrips another that the overpowered unit is left idle without anything to do the majority of time.

So yes, your claim is true that everything has a bottleneck except something with infinite power.... Which, using that definition, makes the claim ludicrous, agreed...

I wonder though if they are simply claiming a very well balanced system...

And a check of OP confirms... Claim is of balance, not infinite power.

Ie. each part won't overpower another, thus create a bottleneck because of the overpowered part...

This. Also, I think a bottleneck is when some process/component causes that other systems to not operate on their full potential, so maybe what GG were trying to say is that all components have been designs to have similar max functional parameters so that if one component reaches its limit the others are too

Lack of bottleneck = balanced system, it seems, in this quote... No one component so outstrips another that the overpowered unit is left idle without anything to do the majority of time.

So yes, your claim is true that everything has a bottleneck except something with infinite power.... Which, using that definition, makes the claim ludicrous, agreed...

I wonder though if they are simply claiming a very well balanced system...

And a check of OP confirms... Claim is of balance, not infinite power.

Ie. each part won't overpower another, thus create a bottleneck because of the overpowered part...

Thank you for talking sense. Couple others need to learn the definition of a bottleneck methinks.

A lack of rendering power could only be considered a bottleneck if other elements of the system suffer because of the deficiency. Which is obviously not going to be the case.

As for the subject at hand, The disc drive read speeds could be a bit of a bottleneck as it was in PS3 however I expect most or all games will install a few GB's of data to help get around that, as with PS3.

Thank you for talking sense. Couple others need to learn the definition of a bottleneck methinks.

A lack of rendering power could only be considered a bottleneck if other elements of the system suffer because of the deficiency. Which is obviously not going to be the case.

As for the subject at hand, The disc drive read speeds could be a bit of a bottleneck as it was in PS3 however I expect most or all games will install a few GB's of data to help get around that, as with PS3.

Evolution Studios has admitted that working on PS3 for so long meant that it wasn't exposed to the developments in graphics technology for PCs, meaning it had to play catch-up when moving onto PlayStation 4.

"With it being a very contemporary GPU core, [there's] a whole bunch of new graphics features probably familiar to PC developers, but we've spent a lot of time in PS3 land, so we had to play catch-up on some of those great things like texture varieties, hardware instancing, volume textures, tessellation, texture compression.

"They're all really cool features that we're leveraging in all sorts of interesting ways."

Kirkland is also pretty pleased with what else the PS4 has to offer.

"The CPU part of things, having that asymmetrical architecture, that made it really easy for us to gain great performance from the outset," he explained.

"The Play-Go initiative, which Mark Cerny [PS4 lead architect] spoke about, those are discussions we've been heavily involved in. Combined with the Blu-ray disc for physical delivery, the hard drive is going to allow us to deliver awesome experiences to players in a fraction of the load times and download times that players experienced on PS3 and [360]. So we're really excited about that. We think it'll be a real differentiator."

Evolution Studios is currently working on Driveclub, which is expected to launch alongside the PS4.

Didn't Sony already say they would eliminate load to immerse us gamers into gameplay in a few seconds?

They did say that, but I am wondering how that is all going to work, I wonder if it just hibernates the last game you played or maybe the games will be allowed to be loaded onto the hard drive for faster access...guess I will have to wait until E3 for those details!

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